Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign is trying to dismantle President Trump’s multiple legal challenges contesting battleground state returns two days after the election.
The Biden team’s top legal adviser, Bob Bauer, specifically dismissed Trump camp complaints in Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania as “political theater,” but also part of a “broader” misinformation effort.
“These lawsuits don’t have to have merit,” he said. “It’s to create an opportunity for them to message falsely about what is taking place in the election process.”
Bauer, formerly a White House counsel for former President Barack Obama, spoke to reporters during a Thursday morning briefing, a regularly scheduled question-and-answer session since Trump started telegraphing his election fraud concerns.
“All of this is intended to create a large cloud that, it is the hope of the Trump campaign, that nobody can see through. But it is not a very thick cloud,” he said. “We see through it. So will the courts, and so do election officials.”
During the meeting, Bauer quickly quashed any speculation Attorney General Bill Barr had been involved in any Trump legal cases.
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Biden campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, led the call. She dodged questions about any preparations the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator had made for a possible transition but said she and other Biden aides hadn’t spoken to their Trump counterparts.
Dillon provided an update on her team’s outlook for the states still to be decided, though she remained confident Biden would eventually win the presidency.
At the end of the day, “and we hope it’s today,” Biden will win Pennsylvania by a “sizable” margin, Dillon predicted. She described Georgia, too, as “a true toss-up” but one that leaned in Biden’s direction because outstanding votes were from Democratic-tilted areas and mail-in ballots, which have skewed left.
On Thursday, Trump lawyers launched legal action in Nevada, claiming nonresidents voted in the state. In Pennsylvania, Trump’s camp is fighting over allegations a Philadelphia observer wasn’t permitted to be close enough to ballot processing on top of other challenges to the state’s voter registration procedures and ballot deadlines.
In Michigan, Trump staffers are attempting to stop vote counting over access issues and have filed misconduct accusations in Detroit. And in Georgia, they are seeking to enforce state laws covering the way late absentee ballots are stored and eventually destroyed.
